Saturday, 4 August 2012

"I stand for the touch of bodily awareness between human beings," he said to himself, "and the touch of tenderness. And she is my mate. And it is a battle against the money, and the machine, and the insentient ideal monkeyishness of the world. And she will stand behind me there. Thank God I've got a woman! Thank God I've got a woman who is with me, and tender and aware of me."

A quote that made me smile, inwardly and outwardly.

Some quotes I come across are a challenge and a question mark and an exclamation point. They raise the internal eyebrow, they make me look twice and wonder. Others are a homecoming and a flush of recognition and an affirmation.

I've just finished Lady Chatterley's Lover for the first time. I fully intend to read it again and then perhaps I might don a more critical stance - though that seems to be totally against the spirit of the book actually. To me anyway, at this time. Because so much of it was a flush of recognition and a warm homecoming.

Words are so important. Perhaps it's feeble-minded of me to only fully come to appreciate the reality of something once it's been put into words. To say YES! to it once someone as talented as Lawrence has been able to articulate it for me. But so what. Bette to come to a YES! than to never come to it at all.

I felt the YES! from cover to cover.

I thought about the Man and how I feel when we are together. I speak only for myself in this, as who knows what is going on behind those eyes of his. But for me, this is what we 'stand for'. A world apart from the 'insentient ideal monkeyishness'. A different wonderland, just as valid. There are many things far from ideal about 'us'. I'm not going to list them, for it doesn't matter. But there is nothing monkeyishness. Nothing farcical, nothing made of superficial appearance, I think is what Lawrence means. Nothing of the mechanical, the socially ordained, the socially constrained. Of course, it creeps in. But I think we're trying to live and build a way around it, imperfect as it might be, transient as it might be (though I hope it isn't!) It's worth a try, and we're trying. Without struggle.

We assert and re-assert, without ever having explicitly agreeing to do so, the intimate, the soft, the warm, the unspoken, the tender, the kind. He is bringing me towards that part of myself, in a deeper way than I could have alone. In a more adventurous way, in a more lived way. I must have wanted that, and I didn't know I did. I fought against that need, for a long time. But he stands for the touch of tenderness. And does not fight it. And holding my hand, he is walking me towards it, quietly, without even knowing it.

So a few days ago I received another Postcrossing postcard, this time from a girl in Lviv, Ukraine. (Pronounced, roughly, as lev-iu on the Wikipedia site and as Le-viv by the BBC). If you're into football, you'll know the city as the host of the Euro 2012.

I'm not into football, and again, I hadn't heard of it. So I googled.

I won't try to summarize this incredibly detailed Wikipedia article - it describes what seems to be a really vibrant city! Lonely Planet calls it "mysterious, edgy and architecturally lovely", and says that its citizens boast that it is Ukraine's "least Soviet city" (I'm guessing that's meant to endear it to us) :)

My postcrossing friend recommends it for coffee. And since I'm totally addicted to caffeine, this got my attention! She says her city is famous for the best coffee in the world.